The people of this country are being remorselessly, relentlessly, and very skillfully, propagandized against the securing of our sovereign territory from the millions of foreign nationals who are invading it.

They are being convinced to happily accept the demise of our right to govern ourselves in liberty, which will, of course, also strip our earthly posterity of the precious gift of the Blessings of Liberty.

And Trump being the poster boy for border security will likely be one of the worst things that has ever happened to the cause of preserving and defending our sovereignty, security, and borders.

My best guess is that he will ultimately accomplish nothing, and compromise away everything, because he lacks the basic understanding of, and commitment to, the principles that are necessary to actually secure this country.

He's making the job of those who want to destroy this country and its sovereignty and independence much, much easier.

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended." -- Frédéric Bastiat

To truly understand the essence of the concept of UNALIENABLE rights, and therefore to truly understand the essence of the American republic and our national claim to self-government in liberty, you have to first understand that you are entitled to absolutely NOTHING that God hasn't given you title to, and that even if God gives you title to something, it's only as a tenant.

As the Sovereign, eternal, absolute Owner of everything, He can repossess anything He's lent you - including your very life itself - whenever and however He pleases, while remaining perfectly righteous, holy, and just in doing so.

But, as long as you are His lawful tenant, living within His legitimate grant of tenancy, no other man can rightfully, legitimately, lawfully, strip you of God's generous gifts, which include your right to live, your right to live freely, and your right to own and possess private property -- all, of course, within the natural moral limits posed by the legitimate exercise of the rights of others.

In summary, legitimate human government exists to protect your legitimate God-given rights, and the legitimate rights of everyone else, while acting as a punisher of evil, and an adjudicator of conflicts that may arise between your exercise of rights and the exercise by others of their rights.

Human governments that violate God-given rights, or fail to resist evil, or that act unrighteously or unjustly, only delegitimize and destroy themselves. They don't, they can't, change the natural law as created and instituted by God.

This, my friends, is the first principle, the cornerstone principle, of our country. If this understanding is not soon fully restored in the hearts, minds, and political and governmental practices of America, this building cannot long stand. Our national destruction is inevitable. Our fall may come by degrees, or it may come all of a sudden. Only the omniscient, omnipotent Creator of us all knows that. But you can be sure, it WILL come. The laws of nature and nature's God will not be mocked nor ignored for long.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

"Moral, constitutional, republican self-government in liberty cannot possibly co-exist with socialism, with Islam, with the homosexual agenda, or with the practice of human abortion. One absolutely precludes the other, sooner or later.. Pick a side, because it is an existential fight to the finish, whether you like it or not."

"Those who rebel against legitimate authority, in other words authority instituted and authorized by God for our own good, for our own protection, and the good and protection of others, shall not prosper. Conversely, neither will those who refuse to rise up against illegitimate power, against evil. Either way you're a slave, to your own selfish passions, or to a wicked outside force. Instead, let us once again be what our wise forebears were, the moral, self-governing, sovereign, free people of the United States, under Almighty God."-- Tom Hoefling

Tom HoeflingThe “lesser of two evils” philosophy is by definition godless Utilitarianism. That philosophy excludes faith, the belief that if we will simply align ourselves with right, and do right, God will, in His good time, step in on our behalf. It destroys the foundations of American independence, liberty, and self-government. George Washington, and the rest of the founders, made constant reference to divine Providence, crediting that Providential Power as the Source for all their successes. Unless we are willing to return to their attitude, and emulate their moral, courageous actions, there truly is no hope for the republic they fought so hard to establish. “If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.” - George Washington “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” — Closing lines of the Declaration of Independence

WNDAlan KeyesThe dispute over their grazing rights on land administered by the federal government brought the Bundy family into tense confrontation with the Obama faction. Obama and his cohorts intended to make an example of the Bundy family, one that would discourage all Americans tempted to stand on their rights from doing so. But what was supposed to be a spectacular execution, striking fear into the heart of Americans who still think they live in the land of the free, has instead demonstrated the fact that at least some Americans have gone beyond thinking. They have taken action. Following the example of previous generations of Americans, they formed a 21st-century instance of one of the committees of correspondence, which were the backbone of America’s resistance to the intended tyranny of the British government in the run up to America’s war for independence. Instead of the prospect of an intimidating victory over one isolated, vulnerable family, the Obama faction faced the common resolve of an organized community of citizens asserting their right to self-government. It was supposed to be a chilling exercise of factional dominance. Instead it was shaping up to be a Rosa Parks episode, likely to serve as the byword for inspiring citizens throughout the nation to act on what it means to be American. Worse still from the would-be tyrants’ viewpoint, the Obama faction would come off looking like the bullies they most certainly are, arrogantly drawing first blood in their bid to crush the spirit of American liberty. Now there are reports indicating that corrupt motives are at work in the U.S. government’s adamant effort to assert its “ownership” of the grazing land used by the Bundy ranch. A case can be made that the U.S. government’s management of the land was a form of permanent arbitration, intended to reduce the likelihood that local disputes would lead to violent confrontation. But arbitration makes sense only if the arbitrator is an “honest broker,” i.e., someone who has no prejudicial interest in the outcome. The U.S. government’s role is to help manage the land, not to help itself to the land. It is to be managed in the interest of the locals, who are thus acknowledged to own the usufruct, i.e., the right to derive profit or benefit from the property. Of course, the actual intention of the U.S. government’s delegated land-management role is of no importance to Obama and his minions. Their aim is to “nationalize” the land, using whatever legal pretext is available. As an excuse, they look for some legalistic pretext for asserting ownership the U.S. government was never intended to possess, along with the power to determine how land is used without any regard for what is fair to local interests and good stewardship of the land. What is happening in Nevada is just a foretaste of things to come, as proposals move forward that will have the effective of allowing the Obama faction to assert pharaoh-like national ownership of much of the economically valuable land in America. This is proof of the Obama faction’s totalitarian socialist agenda. But it also signals that a form of government is being imposed on the nation in which the government’s power is not constrained by respect for the rights of the people, as individuals or as a whole. Instead it is being deployed with the collusion of elected officials who serve as the focal points of factional dictatorship; lords, as it were, in an oligarchic regime that is no longer supposed to represent the people who “elected” them. When government consists in rule by the wealthy, powerful few the deployment of power on their selfish behalf is not a corruption of government. It is the purpose for which it exists. The oligarchs own the country, exercising the full prerogatives of ownership, with the usufruct of all its goods, including the labor of its people. In the course of the 20th century, we Americans allowed the institution of a national tax and banking system that handed the usufruct of our labor over to the control of a powerful few (those I refer to as the elitist faction.) We allowed the power of the judiciary to be abused so that this elitist faction could overturn the moral ideas and institutions (like the God-endowed family) without which the heart and spirit of self-government cannot be maintained.Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/at-the-bundy-ranch-a-rosa-parks-moment/#zQBoWLwBHIGcokHh.99

"What do children need? Before anything else, they need love. They need truth. They need protection from the evil that is in this world. Can government bureaucrats give them any of those things? Not really. As George Washington rightfully said, 'government is FORCE.' It's not love. It's not caring. Only parents, the ones who were entrusted by God with the duty to raise up their children to be good, decent human beings and honest, patriotic citizens, can provide that, with the help of a responsible, caring community, in cooperation with good teachers. That's the primary reason I continue to advocate for T.L.C., which is True Local Control, of our schools. The financial, governmental reasons for these reforms are very real as well, but the primary motivator for me is the restoration of the love, the nurture, and the protection of our posterity."

“If any should say, it is in vain for them as individuals to be vigilant, zealous and firm in pursuing any measures for the security of our rights, unless all would unite: I would reply: Ages are composed of seconds, the earth of sands, and the sea of drops, too small to be seen by the naked eye. The smallest particles have their influence.

Such is our state, that each individual has a proportion of influence on some neighbor at least; he, on another, and so on; as in a river, the following drop urges that which is before, and every one through the whole length of the stream has like influence.

We know not, what individuals may do. We are not at liberty to lie dormant until we can, at once, influence the whole. We must begin with the weight we have. Should the little springs neglect to flow till a general agreement should take place, the torrent that now bears down all before it, would never be formed.

These mighty floods have their rise in single drops from the rocks, which, uniting, creep along till they meet with another combination so small that it might be absorbed by the travelers foot. These unite, proceed, enlarge, till mountains tremble at their sound.

Let us receive instruction from the streams, and without discouragement, pursue a laudable plan.”

"A well regulated Militia, being NECESSARY to the security of a free State, the RIGHT of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT be infringed."

-- The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

Recently, we got the news that Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has set up a new political action committee in our state, in preparation for the 2014 and 2016 elections, for the purpose of advancing his anti-Right to Keep and Bear Arms agenda. I know I speak for many Iowans when I say to him, simply, “Go back to New York.” In Iowa, we generally go out and shoot WITH our neighbors, not AT them. That’s because we understand the value of innocent human life, and that guns are nothing more than the physical tools, the implements, we need for defending ourselves, our families, our property, and, ultimately, our liberties and rights. Gun violence, and violence overall, is nothing more than a symptom of the moral breakdown of a people and a society. It has little to do with which physical objects are available to commit those criminal acts. Take away the guns and an immoral, violent people will bash each others’ brains in with a rock. No matter how much Mr. Bloomberg brags in the press about how safe it is in New York City, as compared to other big cities in America, our murder rate in Iowa is miniscule compared to his hometown, or Chicago, or Detroit, or Washington, DC, the places with the most draconian, unconstitutional, restrictions on the people’s gun rights. Most of our Iowa counties go decades without a single incidence of firearms-related murder, despite the fact that we are quite well-armed here, thank you very much. On a merely pragmatic level, why in the world would we listen to him? More importantly and to the point, our Iowa Constitution asserts quite explicitly, right out of the gate, in Section One of our Bill of Rights, that:

“All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain INALIENABLE rights--among which are those of enjoying and DEFENDING life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and DEFENDING property, and pursuing and obtaining SAFETY and happiness.”

Our most sacred and important rights are not open to negotiation or compromise, because the word INALIENABLE means something:

inalienableadjective \ (ˌ)i-ˈnāl-yə-nə-bəl : impossible to take away or give up: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred

Our state motto remains:

“Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”

There are still large numbers of us who mean that. Any Iowa political figure that is foolish enough to find common cause with Bloomberg will almost certainly suffer a crushing political defeat, no matter how much money he expends on their behalf. And every prospective 2016 presidential candidate who comes courting in the months and years ahead will find that their political fortunes are completely dependent on whether they side with him in this matter, or with We the People of Iowa and our natural, God-given, inalienable rights. I’ll close with the wise words of one of the most distinguished New Yorkers in history, who understood exactly what the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is, in fact, all about:

“Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped. ... This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.”

– Alexander Hamilton of New York, Federalist #29, October 27, 1787

Tom Hoefling is a Republican candidate for Iowa governor in 2014. You can check him out at http://www.tomhoefling.com.If you agree with Tom Hoefling, and are committed to the preservation of our most important liberties and rights, please join the Iowa Leadership and Accountability Project today! We need you! http://www.tomhoefling.com/join-ilap.html

"As we survey the landscape in our country today, we find much to deeply concern us, or even perhaps in many instances to infuriate us - in politics, in government, in the media, in academia, in business, even in the pulpits and the pews, but, in the midst of all of that, there is still much to love about America, and about Americans, if you really look for it. There are still many with a deep faith in God, who live out that faith in love and kindness shown to others. There are many who show by their actions that they care about the protection and the care of the weakest and most helpless among us. There are many who give, of themselves and their resources of time, energy and money, to help those who are less fortunate, or to help restore our country to its principled basis. For all their many flaws, many, if not most, Americans are still a pretty decent bunch. So don't give up hope. The last chapters of American history have not yet been written. And We the People, under God, still have the power to determine what those chapters are going to say about us."

“Nil desperandum, -- Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.” -- Samuel Adams

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." -- Winston Churchill

"We were intended to be a righteous, free, self-governing people under God. No matter what anyone else does, no one can stop you from being that in your own world, in your own sphere of influence, but you."

"History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781

"Other nations have received their laws from conquerors; some are indebted for a constitution to the suffering of their ancestors through revolving centuries. The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. . . .

"Our Union is now complete; our Constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties: We may justly address you as the decemviri did the Romans, and say: 'Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.'”

"In my public life I aspire to be naught but a figurehead, for the One Who made us, for self-evident truth, for principle, for right, for We the People, for Posterity, to be the truest representation of the foregoing I can be, in the land of the free, the home of the republican, constitutional form of representative self-government that our forebears sacrificed, and bled, and in some cases died, to give us."

"When you tell me I have no choice but evil in this election, frankly, you're declaring the end of elections, of representative self-government, in America. Because, by definition, the word 'election' means choice."

‎"The phenomenon of millions of people voting for what they say they hate, solely out of abject fear of a 'greater evil,' is in fact the destruction of the whole idea of constitutional, republican, REPRESENTATIVE self-government. In other words, it signals the demise of the United States of America."

-- Tom Hoefling, Sept. 24, 2012

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the ONLY device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but BY REPRESENTATIVES chosen by themselves..."

The difference between these two opposing views forms the heart of a crisis in the United States right now.

The common liberal view of human nature is that it is fundamentally good and should be given room to flourish. The biblical and realist view is that it is fundamentally evil and must be conscientiously governed.

Thankfully, America’s Founders took the latter view. As a result, the system of government they created has stood for over two centuries and done much to guarantee the nation’s success.

They realized that government is necessary in order to check the evils of human nature in society. They also recognized—having fought and bled in order to free themselves from a tyrant—that firm limits on power are needed in order to check the evils of human nature within the government.

. . . .

In the Constitution, the American Founders established a system that successfully governs the government.

'Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.'

Tom Hoefling on Government:

"Just as 'good fences make for good neighbors,' good government is mainly about knowing where the legitimate boundaries are, and having the courage to defend those borders forcefully. This is true in terms of the defense of our territory, our security, and our national sovereignty, but it also applies to the sworn duty of all of those in government to equally protect the God-given, unalienable rights of each individual person, from their creation onward, their sacred obligation to stay well within the enumerated powers of our constitutions, and of the role legitimate government must play in balancing the competing rights and interests of the people, in order to establish justice."